


Do you feel better now, as she falls to the ground

by firelord65



Series: Fecky's Whumptober Oneshots [10]
Category: Divergent (Movies), Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Book/Movie 2: Insurgent, Erudite Experiments, Gen, Greater than canon violence, Sparring, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26943709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelord65/pseuds/firelord65
Summary: Tris volunteers herself as a sacrificial lamb to Erudite and to Jeanine's experiments.
Series: Fecky's Whumptober Oneshots [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950469
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Do you feel better now, as she falls to the ground

**Author's Note:**

> Another night, another whump fic. Tonight we're back with Divergent, this time with Tris in an Erudite experiment. There is some greater-than-canon violence here as a warning. And due to the prompt it has a lot of blood and injury talk. 
> 
> Day 10: They Look So Pretty When They Bleed - Blood Loss | Internal Bleeding | Trail of Blood

Jeanine's latest design wasn't anything special. Tris had almost laughed when she unveiled it. The next challenge to a Divergent's "unfathomable" mindset was, what, a page out of the Dauntless training handbook? With her collection of spare bulldogs, they probably needed something to burn through their energy. Not everyone could be on watch or pushing back against the loyalist Dauntless in the city. There had been a stalemate announced when Tris volunteered herself into their custody. It had been a better choice than waiting around for the next siege or flick of the mind control implants.

There was clear animosity from some of the Dauntless. They hit the hardest, coming after Tris in pairs or groups of four. That was where Jeanine drew the line initially. Tris did alright for the first few minutes as she fended off the blows and strikes from the more experienced soldiers. Eventually though she folded, dropping to the ground to curl up and protect her most vital pieces. The test would end there, or at least the timer would stop. The kicks to her back, gut, and skull might not taper off for another minute or so.

Tris made a good punching bag, and she wasn't going to let Jeanine's thuggery intimidate her. She was weakening, however, regardless of her determination. Her head had taken a hard blow the previous afternoon and left her ears ringing even now the next morning.

One of the blue suit-jacketed Erudite would drag her out from her cell and dump her before Jeanine in the crisp, sterile workroom. Jeanine of course was outside, monitoring through the wide panel of full sized windows - shatterproof and possibly even bulletproof, if Tris' attempts before had taught her anything - or from the smattering of cameras positioned in bubbles around the room.

Each morning the room would be clean and smelling strongly of bleach. By the end of the day it might have blood and definitely sweat slick on the floors and walls. The lights were blinding today. Tris screwed up her eyes and shaded them with her hand. The Erudite who had brought her in today dared to hover in the doorway, taunting her with a long view of the hall that might lead to freedom. Or at least somewhere that wasn't this torture chamber of pain.

"Your tenacity never ceases to amaze." Jeanine's voice sounded tinny through the single speaker embedded in the ceiling. Tris was too short to break it. She longed to. "Every day you come back ready and raring to go. Is that a personal trait I wonder or did Dauntless beat that into you?"

Tris's mouth pressed in a flat line, and she felt the twinge that came from three days of split lips never given the time to heal properly. It was a game with rules she couldn't decipher whether or not she was supposed to respond to the woman. These few days Tris had elected to keep quiet and it had at least helped her own sanity. She didn't have to bother to think of one-ups and witty retorts to Jeanine's remarks.

The physical challenge was a welcome change compared to the battery of simulations that Jeanine had started with. Hours and hours facing the same seven fears while Jeanine pushed her next cocktail of pharmaceuticals into the port on Tris' inner arm. She had pulled it out the first night and learned very quickly that Erudite was content to wait until she had bled herself delirious before opening the cell door to treat the wound. It hadn't gotten Tris any advantage, and the next afternoon - the soonest that she could be pumped back full of O negative and conscious enough for the simulations to mean anything to her - she was strapped back onto Jeanine's setup once more.

Tris shook her head, bringing herself back to the present. The port was still there, too. It was a constant irritation that she now had to guard from undue harm during these exercises.

Jeanine had finished her talking and had turned to her array of screens. Tris frowned and looked back to the doorway once more. Her expression soured further when she spotted a familiar face there. Apparently the challenges were turning personal now rather than just brutally impossible. In strode Peter, cracking his knuckles and a wide grin. "Missed me, Stiff?" he crooned.

Tris didn't move. The less that she moved, the better for her pounding head. She tracked him with her head, watching as he sized her up. As usual, he hardly seemed impressed. "What's wrong?" Peter continued. "You look like you haven't been having a good time. Santiago and Evans looked like they took a few hits, so I thought maybe you wouldn't be so battered. But I'm thinking that this is going to be a cakewalk for me."

His ego and arrogance had returned in full force. Tris settled back onto her feet firmly and widened her stance. She did at least have one advantage over him even with her addled head; she wouldn't need to warm up and readapt to fighting. Unless the traitor Dauntless had their own sparring rings Tris knew that Peter hadn't been in a _true_ fight in weeks. Their scuffle in Amity had hardly counted. Tris however was ready.

She bobbed when he wound up his arm and threw a punch at her shoulder, aiming clearly for a few inches above the taped-over port. The move went wide and allowed Tris to side-step. Each motion made her head pulse with pain, an over-inflated balloon straining not to pop. She wavered and earned a sock to the jaw. More stars smattered over her vision. In reflex, Tris kicked out her heel to find his stomach or - if she was lucky - his groin.

Both stumbled away and shook off the blows. Tris wiped away the tears that had welled up and inhaled sharply. Her breathing was labored and only added to the pain in her skull. Hell, anything that wasn't standing stock-still made the pain worse. She watched through the fog in her thoughts as Peter paced back and forth on the floor.

"That was a low blow," he growled. She'd apparently hit lower than she'd thought. _Good_ , Tris thought blearily.

She would have liked to say that the rest of the fight was evenly matched and showed how she had truly learned from her training in Initiation. In actuality Tris was barely holding on, left on the defensive more often than not and left to lash out with cautious blows that only seemed to be pissing Peter off. His technique was sloppy, but he didn't have a piercing ringing in his ears or two weeks of lab tests dragging him down.

Tris clapped him on the head with two open palms in an attempt to get him dizzy. Her hands weren't lined up properly. The strike hit just below his ears and not with enough force to hurt his neck. He grabbed her wrist - yep, the bad one - and twisted _hard_. Tris yielded when she felt his fingers scrabbling at the bandage on her upper arm that were now fully exposed. "Stop!" she shrieked. He twisted his hand.

The pain was too much. She could feel the grey overtaking her vision. The last thing she felt was Peter pushing her to her knees. He said something before letting out a pointless strike to her face, but it fell on deaf ears. Tris was out.

* * *

Coming back after getting knocked out didn't have the same sort of grace that had come with the knock-out. Not this time. Tris surged to wakefulness, throwing herself onto her side as every single searing pain made its way through the synapses to her brain in one miserable wave. She gagged and retched, her breakfast spattering wetly on the tile next to her face.

The smell was almost as bad as the pain, though that was probably due to the copper that seemed to coat Tris' tongue. She rolled onto her back and lifted one hand warily to her face. Every patch of skin that she touched was raw. Blood transferred to her fingers from the worst spots where it hadn't dried yet. By her best guess, Tris had only been out for a few minutes. She groaned and let her hand drop back to the ground. Her other arm… hmm.

If Peter was still around, he was being remarkably quiet. If Jeanine's past trials were anything to go by, Tris would get maybe another ten minutes to recover before the next "challenger" would be let in. Today seemed to be a one on one kind of day. At least there weren't too many Dauntless who would take the fight as personally as Peter had.

"She looks like hell," a low voice spoke from somewhere _other_ in the room. Tris hadn't bothered to figure out where she was. She couldn't remember where they'd finished. Part of her had hoped that she'd managed to throw up right in Jeanine's direction though. A laugh bubbled through Tris' throat, unable to be contained. It was helping her to ignore all the pain, especially the white-hot agony that was creeping into her awareness from the spot where her bandage had been.

Jeanine answered through the speaker as usual. "Finding someone's limits isn't a pretty task. Someone can clean the floor and then you can proceed. We want to keep things as consistent as possible between trials." Tris giggled again. Somehow it was just all so ridiculous. What did it matter how easy she was to break? There couldn't have been so many Divergents that this even mattered. Who else was an Abnegation-born, Dauntless-initiated Divergent with a bonus dash of Erudite aptitude that never kicked in when it would help?

The same voice from elsewhere spoke again. "She's delirious and bleeding for fuck's sake," he said. There was something familiar about it, something that seemed more at home with mockery rather than concern.

"I'm not losing another day of trials. We've had enough delays as it is. The timeline was supposed to proceed much quicker than this once we had a suitable candidate," Jeanine replied sharply. Tris' interest waned. The pounding in her head was in tempo with her heartbeat as was a fresh tinge of pain in her face and arm. Idly, Tris tried to peel open one eyelid. She managed to lift it about halfway. It certainly wouldn't be enough to fight with again. That wouldn't make Jeanine happy.

Footsteps approached. Her tiny window of vision was obscured by a knee as the person crouched by her head. Tris was too tired to try and move away. She needed to save her strength for later. Just a ten minute nap. That would be enough. Her vision went dark again, sending alarm coursing through her.

Two hands cradled the side of her head, steadying her as she tried to sit up. "Don't move. Don't!" the voice said. It was the person there, obviously. Tris exhaled and focused again on opening her eyes. It was futile. There was too much swelling perhaps. Or the blood had dried over them. Peter took such joy in hitting her face. Her dropping to unconsciousness wouldn't have stopped him there.

"She needs a doctor," the man said. "There's- she's bleeding out." Tris frowned. She remembered asking Jeanine for help, please, after the first few rounds. It only ever pissed the woman off. Tris tried to tell him, lifting the arm that was pins and needles and a white hot fire to swat his hand. She managed one hit, barely even a tap, before she lost control of the limb. It smacked back to the ground with a wet slap.

A sharp whistle from the man above her made Tris wince, but worse was when she felt his hands move from the sides of her head to peel up her sleeve. It was stuck to the skin, soaked with something tacky. "You, get a stretcher. Tell your buddy to find a med kit. _Now!_ " the man shouted. Tris noted all of this with an odd sort of lightness. She felt like she was floating now and actually the pain wasn't really bothering her anymore, either. It was there, yes, but did it matter? Not really.

She could really focus on the mystery of why this man sounded familiar. Opening her eyes was still futile, so Tris focused on his low voice as he talked through what he was doing. "I'm going to finish pulling this out so that I can apply pressure. Otherwise the port might press against the vein and cause a hell of a lot more damage," he explained.

Tris smiled, just a little because her face didn't really want to cooperate after all. Her luck really was remarkable. Or maybe Jeanine had been picking only old faces for her trials today. How else would she have now been getting first aid from Eric, her old faction Leader?

Her smile was ripped away as Eric followed through with his plan, tearing the port fully from her upper arm. The pain that had been just beneath her notice was once again at full force. Tris seized, her working arm reaching to claw at Eric's leg. "I know, yep," he continued with that same even voice. "It hurts."

"Why?" Tris rasped.

His hand was now firmly wrapped around her forearm, applying pressure. He shouted again for the med kit, _now_ dammit. Then he was back to reassuring Tris that it was going to hurt for "a long-ass time."

Tris shook her head, one thought able to punch through the white hot agony that had only gotten worse with his treatment. At least bleeding out slowly had been blissful. "Why… help?" Tris choked out.

She wished that she could see. Maybe that would help her to understand. He wasn't replying. Did he feel bad? Or maybe this was just another layer to Jeanine's fucked up experiments. "Why, Eric?"

More footsteps joined them. The pressure on her arm dropped away briefly until Eric pressed a thick wad of dressing to the wound. "Just hang on," Eric ordered. "You have to hang on."

Tris' shoulder shook as she laughed yet again. Or maybe she was crying. Either way, she still didn't understand why. But she would keep holding on, keep fighting every day.


End file.
